Official and Confidential by Anthony Summers

Author:Anthony Summers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2012-02-08T04:40:06+00:00

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‘Hoover passed along gossip to the President he served, and that practice could raise questions in a President’s mind. What did Hoover know about him? In theoretical terms, that put Hoover in the position of a veiled blackmailer.’

Dean Rusk, former Secretary of State

In October 1955, Joseph Kennedy had returned from a foreign vacation to an America in turmoil. President Eisenhower had just survived a near-fatal heart attack, and many doubted whether he would be fit enough to run in 1956. Would the Democratic candidate be Adlai Stevenson? If so, would Kennedy’s thirty-eight-year-old son John be on the ticket for Vice President?

The Kennedy political machine was beginning to roll. The prize that had eluded the father was now on the horizon for the son. That fall day, however, Joseph Kennedy enthused about a very different possibility – that within twelve months America might elect President J. Edgar Hoover. At home in Hyannis Port, the family headquarters in Massachusetts, he dictated this letter:

Dear Edgar,

I think I have become too cynical in my old age, but the only two men I know in public life today for whose opinion I give one continental both happen to be named Hoover – one John Edgar and one Herbert – and I am proud to think that both of them hold me in some esteem … I listened to Walter Winchell mention your name as a candidate for President. If that should come to pass, it would be the most wonderful thing for the United States, and whether you were on a Republican or Democratic ticket, I would guarantee you the largest contribution that you would ever get from anybody and the hardest work by either a Democrat or Republican. I think the United States deserves you. I only hope it gets you.

My best to you always.

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